For this one, I’m out of the niche that knows me as an authority about crop circles, which is how we got our good enrollment for the series that was all about the circles. To enroll this one, I could use help from compatriots. Please give an endorsement to lists and friends to tell them they can expect good experiences.

Andy Thomas will do the sole crop circle webinar. I’d rather hear Andy talk about the circles than anyone else, and he’ll blow any closed mind into an awareness that something tangible and very important has been stirred up by the phenomenon. The other guests are my pyschonaut heroes. Edgar Mitchell tuned into a bigger reality than the one he occupied before he walked on the moon, and he created the Institute of Noetic Sciences to tune the rest of us in when he got back. Stephan Schwartz, even before he did pioneering work with remote viewing, inspired me with a talk about how twelve good men could save the world (must have been before women’s lib to impress me). Klaus Dona, my dolphin swim buddy, knows more than anybody else about things found all over the world that don’t fit into the history books. You will be enchanted by all of them!

I just watched Nancy Talbott…the depth and quality of the presentations has been mind-blowing. Suzanne Taylor, of “What on Earth?,” is the host, and has done an amazing job putting this series together.

I think we were all somewhat blown away by John’s brilliant presentation. It may take a while to fully process…I’ve been wanting John to publish his crop circle research for years. Can’t wait for that to come out.

Here’s an unedited string from the running chat that went on during the first one, by physics and astronomy professor, Jeffrey Wilson, who heads up a very enthusiastic US circle contingent:

If this is the BEGINNING, we’re in for one totally amazing series!!!”

Very Cool, Jeffrey!

wowza!!!

holy shit

sorry for the crudity of this statement, but WOW

unbelievable!

I’m pretty convinced the circles are the most important thing happening in the world today.

The more you learn about cc’s, the more you are amazed…

I want to be standing next to Jeffrey on 12/23/2012.

This is totally, totally fabulous — this is so true of why we have to be okay with Mystery to want to be a croppie, right?

BRAVO Jeffrey!

high five fist pump 🙂

Suzanne, please make a film about this research!!!

I’m so thankful for this as an opening presentation….

Ohmygod, if this is the BEGINNING, we’re in for one totally amazing series!!!

I’ve got four pages of notes to spend the rest of the week googling now…!

This could be a real milestone in the crop circle saga, where the assault on the legitimacy of the phenomenon grows ever more virulent. Maybe the escalation of assault is a sign of an impending shift of awareness, given the forces of conservatism typically get stronger as liberal breakthroughs threaten to occur.

I got this email:

Suzanne,

My name is R.J. Vigoda. I’m an anthropologist specializing in the assessment of transpersonal phenomena and the critique of transpersonal theory. In January, 2011, I was jointly engaged by the philosophy and anthropology departments of a university in the eastern United States (terms of employment forbid specific disclosure) to critically assess the current literature on crop circles to determine its “scholarly character” and whether it contained “adequate argumentation supporting the contention that crop circles are the result of alternate agency.” I was given nine months to complete my evaluation at which time I made an oral interdepartmental presentation and relinquished my research notes.

During the course of this project I quickly became familiar with your name, reviewed your work and sat in on the web seminar you presented last summer in conjunction with Evolver Intensives. While I’m retained to be highly dispassionate and skeptical my conclusions remain my own. Having finished my research I was deeply affected and intrigued by the results. The thrust of my report offered two distinct conclusions: certain crop circles seem very likely the result of alternate agency and such a potentially important field demands a more immediate, intensive and measured degree of critical investigation. With this in mind and wanting to contribute directly to the study, having discharged my responsibilities I independently authored an article encapsulating the essence of my research for a general audience. I believe a paper examining the rationality and defensibility of the arguments present on both sides of the circle debate could be valuable towards placing circle research on firmer intellectual footing.

Knowing your sympathies and profile within the field I was hoping you might better direct me toward the most appropriate and advantageous outlets for a paper of this kind. The article is approximately 8,000 words. I’m not interested in any kind of compensation. I can be contacted at: rhera@comcast.net.

Thank you for your time and involvement. I hope to hear from you.

R.J. Vigoda

Reality Sandwich has received the submission I suggested R.J. make, but it doesn’t exactly fit their format and it may not be published there. If anyone has any other good ideas for publication, let R.J. know. In the meantime, here is this wonderful document. May it help to open humanity’s eyes to the mystery that prevails: Crop Circles Legitimacy.

When I was invited to see a rough cut of THRIVE, to review the crop circle content, I was concerned about the movie taking positions that people who were interviewed for it would object to. I said I thought it was urgent to confirm with them that indeed they would be all right being in the movie. That never happened, and this statement that just was issued is the other shoe dropping:

Disassociation From Thrive Statement

We are a group of people who were interviewed for and appear in the movie Thrive, and who hereby publicly disassociate ourselves from the film.

Thrive is a very different film from what we were led to expect when we agreed to be interviewed. We are dismayed that we were not given a chance to know its content until the time of its public release. We are equally dismayed that our participation is being used to give credibility to ideas and agendas that we see as dangerously misguided.

We stand by what each of us said when we were interviewed. But we have grave disagreements with some of the film’s content and feel the need to make this public statement to avoid the appearance that our presence in the film constitutes any kind of endorsement.

In issuing their statement distancing themselves from Thrive, Robbins and his colleagues point out that they are “dismayed” that the Gambles refused to let them know what the film was about until the time of its public release. In interviews with the Weekly several weeks ago, Paul Hawken and Elisabet Sahtouris both said Foster Gamble misrepresented the film when he asked them to participate.

Robbins says it’s clear that Gamble used him and the others to draw people to Thrive. He is distressed that the film weaves progressive ideas into its paranoid, radical libertarian narrative. But he stops short of accusing Gamble of deliberately deceiving his audience.

“Foster is extremely naïve about the political consequences of his film,” Robbins concludes.

Where to from here? Could a win/win come out of this? Here’s what I’d said, early on, to Foster Gamble, who comes from the deep Proctor & Gamble pockets that got this movie made and widely seen. It’s his fortune and he can spend it as he wishes, but my thought is to join forces for the greater good to where the message and the campaign for change can be widely acceptable. Here’s what I’ve said to Foster:

It would be great to work together. We clearly have the same passion and desires about life!

The film is a done deal, but it is bothersome to me that its good intentions are sullied by extremist claims. In your zeal to make the world work, see Charles Eisenstein: Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order. It’s a perspective that seems credible to me. I could see you building on THRIVE as the first of a pair or maybe a trilogy of films, where you go from humanity being oppositional and adversarial to promoting a higher stand about raising each person’s consciousness as the answer to the world’s ills.

Or maybe something else. There is so much that is “outside the box” that would force us to re-think our story about who we are and what we are doing here. Unless we change our worldview, it’s fingers in the dike to deal with all the challenges we face, which of course is what the movie is getting at. But you don’t need the global elite as the enemy — in a way “science” is a culprit, keeping us fixated on observable reality so that the bigger picture, where consciousness and spirit reside, gets marginalized. I’d love to see an event – a conference perhaps — that brought out so much contradiction to our story that we would have to deal with changing it. Something like that could make the movie, as the sponsor, into something even bigger than the movie, which would go a ways to toward making its shortcomings somewhat irrelevant.

TheConversation.org had its start when 9/11 dictated that we were in a new world.

At this threshold moment for humanity, when we must choose wisely to avoid what could be our annihilation, this site is dedicated to tracking the emerging intelligence that we need for our very survival, and to conversation in which that intelligence can be forged.

Let those who see beyond the idea of force imposing world order, to where we look to heal the causes of despair, meet here.

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